Oscar 2024

This presentation reports on “travel-reading” as an approach to teach Asian literature. Travel-reading was a humanities grant project and implemented in a summer study abroad program in Taiwan in 2022. Reading Interior Chinatown worked as a pedagogical mechanism that helped students stay thematically engaged with a text while abroad. Students strategically interpreted and evaluated what they heard and saw in the country in comparison with their reading and developed an evolving framework that enabled them to appreciate differences, examine their beliefs, challenge the stereotypes that they had held about East Asian people, and reflected on how the invisibility of certain minorities can affect our consciousness and distort reality in our society.

Technology allows exploration of the artistic and social landscape of L2 cities. Design a project-based module on street art and public art using Google Earth, Instagram, and online resources to explore French and Francophone history, identity, and public discourse around racial diversity, social issues, and ownership of public space. Students leverage online access to public spaces and existing social media skills to create and respond to multimodal virtual tours of specific cities while building linguistic, intercultural, and visual literacy skills. This approach supports exploration of social justice and cultural values at all proficiency levels. Attendees develop materials for their students in hands-on activities. Some knowledge of Instagram is helpful but not required.

To aid their future careers as military officers, the United States Air Force Academy teaches its cadets a brand-new course, “French for Professional Purposes”, through the new pedagogical practice of “Inclusive Learning”. Participants hear how the instructor and her cadet co-presenter built a curriculum to meet the needs of a student body diverse in background, learning styles, age, and gender, with material curated through cadet research. Participants engage in inclusive activities and content representative of the course’s novel approaches to assignments and assessments, and leave with new techniques to make their courses even more inclusive for students.

The emergence of multiliteracies as a key component of Foreign Language Education has led to a re-evaluation of translation as a pedagogical tool. With their focus on multiliteracy, translation activities provide access to authentic texts, and help students develop intercultural competence, as they engage with cultural narratives, in various modalities (films, graffiti, commercials…). The aim of this panel is to reflect on the potential of textual/audiovisual translation and translanguaging in the L2 classroom. It will showcase examples of student performance (in Greek and French), and reflect on the significance of translation as an instrument of mediation between cultures and as a tool for inquiry into the ways language constructs, and is constructed by, identity, culture and gender.

How can social media platforms like Instagram be used to expand the scope of “classroom” and build a virtual learning community? The presenters introduce a year-long community-building project conducted at an elementary Chinese course in college. We focus on how it successfully fosters a deeper connection among members of the Chinese course (teachers, tutors, students, and beyond), enhances meaningful interaction in their life, and helps learners get immersed in the target language and culture – all in a cohesive community. The participants learn how the project was seamlessly integrated into various parts of the course, and jointly reflect on potential ways to adapt the project into their own instructional contexts especially in the post-pandemic era.

Intercultural communicative competence (ICC) plays a critical role in language learners’ growth and success during study abroad. The Chinese Flagship Culture Initiative (CFCI) aims to design cultural materials and embed them in the development of pragmatic and intercultural competences in intermediate and advanced proficiency Chinese learners. The presenters share results from a needs assessment survey identifying areas of weakness in their cultural preparation, podcasts in which students reflect on their study abroad experience, and new cultural materials developed to address current gaps and strengthen students’ ICC. Feedback on the materials from teachers and students as well as effective instructional strategies for using CFCI materials are also discussed.